Category Archives: Nonfiction

November 29, 2024 · 4:00 pm

Feelin’ groovy

This wasn’t a productive week but it was a good week.

Mostly the lack of productivity came from taking Thursday off. I also fell into the trap of having to spread my Local Reporter work over parts of three days. I do my best to concentrate it in one day because that forces me to write a little faster. Once it gets beyond that, the time it takes to write the articles expands. Unfortunately I got an interview late Tuesday and so things stretched over to Wednesday morning. Still the story, about a Carrboro Thanksgiving morning 8k race, came out quite well. My other story, about B3 Coffee, was good but not as inherently interesting.

The Ceaseless Way is now out in paperback, at the initial price of $9.99 (cheaper in ebook) — it’ll go up come the new year. I did some last bits of stuff on the anthology this week and I’ll have another interview post next week, but otherwise, that’s another task checked off.

I did get some work done on Southern Discomfort in the middle of all that but reached one point a little over halfway and I could not figure out how to make it work. It’s nothing insoluble, just that the time left from reporting didn’t leave me with enough clarity to solve it. Definitely done next month, though my cover remains elusive.

And then came Wednesday night. I tend to be obsessively organized; Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s are the few times I turn off and completely go with the flow. That felt great. So did the excellent vegan buffet at Cafe Parizade, where we both stuffed ourselves.

The baklava was exceptionally tasty.

Then there’s Plushie.

Sunday, he puked up in the early morning and TYG thought it might have included blood. She wasn’t sure but we took him to the vet to make certain. Tests and X-rays found nothing wrong but we came back with a bunch of extra meds and some super-bland food.

No puking since. Not only that, he’s perkier and obviously happier and more comfortable than he’s been in a while. That’s great, but also upsetting: he was probably having a low level of tummy discomfort for weeks before he vomited without us realizing there was a problem. Fortunately we have his annual wellness checkup in a week. We’ll talk to the vet and see whether we should keep him on bland food or what.

Still, he is much perkier and that’s a joy to see.

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving and the good feeling continues (or begins) as we move into holiday season.

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Filed under Nonfiction, Personal, Short Stories, Southern Discomfort, Story Problems, The Dog Ate My Homework, Writing

Tagged as Atomic Junkshop, ceaseless way, Local Reporter

November 15, 2024 · 2:25 pm

Back to normal, more or less

I’m still horrified about the shell-shock of last week’s election results. However stuff has to get written and I’m the one who writes it, so back to work this week. But definitely not peak performance. It happens.

Most of the time I wound up watching Jerry Lewis’ 1963 The Nutty Professor, the commentary track, and then the Eddie Murphy remake and its sequel. I keep forgetting it takes longer than the running time: I have to pause it while I write notes, pause it some more while I write down the credits, stop if I get up for tea or whatever … so that took quite a while.

I got 50 pages into my final final absolutely final edit of Southern Discomfort. This is now the priority for the rest of the month; I can’t release it yet because I still have to get my cover art but I want the work finished. And it will be.

I spent way more time than planned on Ceaseless Way. As noted this morning, we’ve settled on Black Friday for the release date. Trouble is, all sorts of last minute technical problems cropped up when I ran it through the Draft 2 Digital and Amazon KDP systems for publishing it. Nothing fatal (I don’t think so) but struggling to work it through took time. Plus there’s a bunch of questions I have for our next Zoom meeting Sunday. Then I’ll have to spend more time Monday putting everything into finished form. I’m looking forward to seeing it out but as I’ve said before, it’s been way more work than I wanted it to be.

I didn’t get anything in for The Local Reporter — all my story queries to various people fell on deaf ears — but at the Atomic Junk Shop website I wrote about the changes and reboots of 1969 such as the price hike from 12 to 15 cents.

I also wrote about changes in the Bat-books. Wilder changes are coming. I’ll be blogging about them soon.

All rights to images remain with current owners. Ceaseless Way cover by GetComics, based on concepts by Arden Brooks.

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Filed under Movies, Nonfiction, Personal, Southern Discomfort, Time management and goals, Writing

Tagged as Atomic Junkshop, ceaseless way

November 1, 2024 · 4:39 pm

A useful tool but not a miracle cure

I have recently started using a notebook to keep track of a lot of the little “do every day” kind of tasks in my life.

And no, you’re not expected to make sense of it. The notes are for me. Keeping track of stuff I’m doing in my calendar app or my Scrivener goals list doesn’t work so well as I have to open my computer to take notes. In evenings and on the weekend I try to stay off the computer and it’s often upstairs and out of the way. Good for relaxing, less for tracking.

While this has worked well as a spur to keep me going on my exercise regimen, giving my throat a steam bath every day (didn’t happen this month, but I came the closest I have in a while) and doing my stretching and yoga, I haven’t been on top of my writing in October. Finishing Southern Discomfort took longer than anticipated; work for The Local Reporter frequently takes extra time; and as usual, working on a movie book takes a lot of time (it will pay off down the road when I’m not rushing though) and I still didn’t get as far as I wanted. Lots of little things — article queries, short story submissions — fall by the wayside. I will carve out specific time slots for the little but necessary stuff this month and see if that helps.

This week I got next to nothing done. TYG was off for the whole week so Tuesday she offered to sit with the dogs all day so I could have a day free of dog-sitting. Monday, however, we went in to vote around 8:30 AM and then went out to lunch a couple of hours later. Even though the voting was quick — someone tipped us off to a polling station with no lines — that chopped up the morning enough I figured, hey, I’d take Monday off as well.

Tuesday turned out not to be my dog-free day. Indeed, if I’d been planning to work, I probably wouldn’t have gotten any done. Both our pups have been biting on their feet which is a sign they need cytopoint anti-allergy shots. And hey, there were a couple of other issues we could ask about — which meant that instead of a vet tech giving them a shot, we needed a doctor, which wound up being two appointments separated by a couple of hours. TYG took one of them in, I stayed home with the other.

When she took Plushie in, it turned out his glaucoma eye pressure was horribly high. TYG had to rush him out to our animal eye doctor half an hour away (the nearby location doesn’t have a doctor on Tuesday’s). Turns out his eye pressure was perfectly normal. Which is a YAY moment but we’re not happy with our regular vet (they did the test multiple times with TYG watching so god knows what the problem is). And of course that took a chunk of time out of our day. Then Trixie went in, which was quick but expensive: she had a massive diarrhea bout the night before (I slept through it on Ambien), way worse than usual. The vet did a lot of checking but nothing seriously wrong turned up. Which is good but frustrating. Though by the end of the day she was back to normal.

The end result was that I got in a bike ride but nothing I’d planned beyond that. However it was a beautiful day for an hour bicycle ride so there’s that. I cannot seem to recover my ability to cycle uphill though.

Wednesday I’d thought I might get back to work and I did. However it was a request from The Local Reporter to do a story on a 102-year-old woman voting early for the first time. I’d planned to skip doing a story this week as I had so little time but I couldn’t say no, so … Anyway, after that I settled for wrapping up odds and ends such as doing some research reading.

It didn’t help that I’d been hit by a hacking cough last weekend, the kind that with me usually becomes an infection. Aggressive early treatment with cough syrup and throat pastilles stopped it from getting that bad, so yay!

And I got in a couple of Atomic Junk Shop posts, one on a couple of extremely sexist stories, one on DC’s House of Mystery in the late 1960s being a place that has actual boarders renting rooms.

Even weirder, one of them is DC artist Gil Kane.

Despite the disruptions, having almost a whole week off wasn’t too bad — it’s something I haven’t done in forever. Hopefully I’ll be full of vim and vigor come Monday.

#SFWApro. Art by Kane, all rights to image remain with current holder.

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Filed under Nonfiction, Personal, Southern Discomfort, The Dog Ate My Homework, Time management and goals, Writing

Tagged as Atomic Junkshop, health, jekyll and hyde, Local Reporter

October 25, 2024 · 3:53 pm

The dice rolled my way this week

Thursday we had the cleaners in. This is good but always cumbersome as we have to keep the dogs out of their way, and now Wisp as well, which is harder (you’ve heard about herding cats?). I figured this would chop up my day so I scheduled my blogging, email and other low-intensity work for that day rather than Friday. That proved fortunate.

Plushie has gotten the habit of climbing on my legs as soon as I go to sleep. This woke me up and I slipped into the mental death spiral (“Am I going to sleep? What if I don’t go to sleep? Am I starting to nod off? Should I give up and get up?”) which makes it impossible to sleep.

Sunday we took Wisp in because she keeps having incidents where she sits, breathing fast and not wanting to move. The vet cleared her of any serious conditions but we’ll probably have to go back for more tests. Anyway I think she had another incident Wednesday night which left me listening to her breathing which didn’t help me sleep any better.

All of which left my brain fried Thursday so I wouldn’t have gotten anything done if I’d tried. Waiting for Friday proved much more satisfactory.

To get the little stuff out the way, I had an article on Carrboro’s plans to win an award for being a bicycle-friendly city. I also had three pieces on Atomic Junk Shop: one on DC’s Deadman, good stories (mostly) from Silver Age series I don’t like, and the first meeting between Batman and DC’s WW II hero Sgt. Rock (Neal Adams cover).

I watched the usual assortment of films for Jekyll and Hyde but didn’t get much writing done on the book. And I made real progress on the final draft of Southern Discomfort.

I’ve been working through a printed copy of the previous draft, plus a copy with suggestions from my friend and beta-reader Maggie. Along with the stuff Maggie spotted I looked for errors in names, directions, spellings, reuses of certain words I’m too fond of. I’ve now gone through both documents though I haven’t made all the corrections in the final draft yet. I’m within fifty pages of the finish.

After that, I finish going over the corrected manuscript, looking for any new errors I introduced while fixing old errors. I’ve found a couple such as a reference to driving through Georgie instead of Georgia. Once I’ve made that final pass I’m done. Then it’s a matter of waiting on my cover artist.

It’s not done but I’ve definitely reached the beginning of the end, so yay.

#SFWApro. All rights to images remain with current holders.

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Filed under Nonfiction, Southern Discomfort, Writing

Tagged as Atomic Junkshop, jekyll and hyde, Local Reporter

October 18, 2024 · 4:30 pm

Slowly things inch towards completion

Which is to say I made progress this week. Journey of a thousand miles, slow and steady wins the race, blah, blah, blah. I still want things finished. I know I’m getting there, but even so.

Little stuff got finished, natch. An article for The Local Reporter on the outcome of this week’s council meeting. At Atomic Junkshop I blogged about Supergirl taking over Adventure Comics while the Legion of Superheroes took her backup in Action Comics. Trust me, a bigger shakeup at the time than it looks today.

I also blogged about the second battle between the X-men and the Sentinels and why, even though it’s a good story, I think it’s lost some of its punch over time. Also, a look at Silver Age cover art.

And I accomplished various tasks: booking rooms for next year’s cons, ordering dog and cat meds, minor but necessary stuff.

On the big stuff, I got some movie viewing in for Jekyll and Hyde, plus writing up my impressions of everything I watched — I’ve learned to do that ASAP or everything blurs in my memory. I read part of the chapter on silent film versions to the writing group and got a solid thumbs up. That’s encouraging.

On Southern Discomfort, the end is in sight. If all goes well I’ll be done by the end of the month, then it’s just a matter of waiting until my cover artist delivers. As I mentioned, my friend and fellow author Maggie gave it a final beta read and she’s been invaluable spotting a few logic gaps, character inconsistencies and such.

And outside the weather has started to turn chilly at last. Feels good, and Plushie’s so much more enthused about his walkies. That’s good to see. Below, a shot taken during early morning walkies — now, of course, it’s completely dark most times we go out.

#SFWApro. Covers by Neal Adams, all rights to images remain with current holders.

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Filed under Nonfiction, Southern Discomfort, The Dog Ate My Homework, Time management and goals, Writing

Tagged as Atomic Junkshop, jekyll and hyde, Local Reporter

October 11, 2024 · 5:15 am

A week that kind of evaporated

Which is to say, not productive.

Part of that was that I’ve been sleeping poorly. If calls from TYG’s job don’t wake me, Plushie’s newfound enthusiasm for crossing over my legs after I go to sleep will do it. I’ve tried adjusting so that he can get to his spot more easily but apparently it then shifts to somewhere else inconvenient.

(We found this guy on our door when we came back from morning walkies. He’s no longer on our door though I did my best not to hurt him when I removed him).

Left to myself I typically wake up after two or three hours, move to the spare bedroom and fall asleep next to Wisp (I’ve no idea why this works). Waking up so much sooner throws things off and I wind up waking up at 1:30 AM or 2 AM and not getting back to sleep. Of course as I work for myself I can take naps during the day, but I never quite catch up.

Another part of the evaporation was that work for The Local Reporter once again expanded to suck up time. I sent out emails Monday for three different stories, not knowing which of them I could get answers for. I got two out of three. One proved unexpectedly complicated; the other required interviews on Tuesday and Wednesday. This threw me off — the Wednesday phone interview wasn’t until 10 AM so I couldn’t wrap up until that afternoon. However my story on local firefighters deploying west to help with the Hurricane Helene aftermath was a good one.

(Party crashers when TYG and I went out for breakfast recently).

I got a little bit of work done on Southern Discomfort in the time remaining, but not much. Most of my time went to Jekyll and Hyde because that takes less creative thought. So I got work done, but not directed where I wanted it. And I didn’t do anything at Atomic Junk Shop because of some site problems. I think we have a workaround for enough of the problems to post next week.

On the plus side, the weather has finally turned cool, occasionally to chilly. I like it, TYG likes it. The dogs are full of pep on morning walks, though Plushie with his dim eyesight resists walking in the early dark. And the weekend is here.

#SFWApro.

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Filed under Nonfiction, Personal, Southern Discomfort, The Dog Ate My Homework, Time management and goals, Writing

Tagged as Atomic Junkshop, jekyll and hyde, Local Reporter

October 4, 2024 · 4:30 pm

Fall is lagging, work is progressing

It’s absurdly warm for this point in the year, more like what I’d expect in early September for this area. Almost like the world is getting much warmer … However we survived Helene, experiencing nothing but heavy rain. Even so, the catastrophe to the west of Durham is a reminder there’s no safe place any more.

(Because of Plushie’s back problems we carry him up and down the stairs. He likes to run up if we forget to gate them off, then waits for us to carry him down).

The work week went well. I watched more movies for Jekyll and Hyde, bringing me almost to the 1950s. I wrote some new material, rewrote some of what I’d already gotten down. I had a story published in The Local Reporter about protecting migrating birds from light pollution. Over at Atomic Junk Shop I blogged about how the Marvel and DC apps affect my comics reading plus a couple of images that caught my attention. Here’s one of them.

For fiction, I was mostly about Southern Discomfort. My final final rewrite is now 2/3 complete; proofreading it is maybe 20 percent along (but I’m catching errors so it’s worthwhile). It’s really looking good if I do say so myself.

I also put in some unsatisfying work on formatting Ceaseless Way. Some of what needs fixing can’t be fixed; some will require input from the Draft 2 Digital help desk. I think I can work around the former (or we’ll learn to live with it); on the latter I’m still waiting. Happily, the last time I asked for help, they delivered.

That was pretty much it. As usual when things go well, these week-in-review posts are much duller. Hope y’all are okay with that — I certainly am.

#SFWapro. All rights to images remain with current holders.

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Filed under Nonfiction, Southern Discomfort, Writing

Tagged as Atomic Junkshop, ceaseless way, Local Reporter

October 2, 2024 · 5:15 am

2024 is now three-quarters over

Which has me reflecting on my writing goals and how well I’ve done meeting them.

Nowhere near as well as I hoped, which isn’t unusual — my reach typically exceeds my grasp. I didn’t finish the second draft of Let No Man Put Asunder. Haven’t finished any short stories. Haven’t sold any. Only attended one con. While I should be able to bring out Southern Discomfort this year I know I won’t finish Savage Adventures, my Doc Savage history. My exercise regimen has also fallen way, way off. And plans to spend time on marketing don’t come to pass.

Part of the problem was our pets’ various health problems — the added time for Plushie’s eye drops, unplanned vet appointments, etc. Having three pets has made it a lot harder to find time by myself to exercise or stretch out, especially as TYG’s schedule requires me to handle the dogs for more of the day (which is fine — her work pays 90 percent of our bills, after all). That adds up to a loss of time and also of mental energy.

Another factor is that everything takes more time than anticipated. I thought I’d factored that into my goals for the year, but I didn’t. My Local Reporter work in particular keeping sucking up bigger chunks of my week than I think it will. I try to minimize that by concentrating all the work in one day each week, but interviewees aren’t always able to do that.

Ceaseless Way turned out to be a much bigger time drain than I expected. Working on a collaborative anthology sounds fun but it’s a lot more work than submitting a story to an editor and letting them handle the rest. Though my collaborators really appreciate the extra work I put in.

Then there’s my decision to starts writing Jekyll and Hyde; I’d considered waiting until Southern Discomfort and Savage Adventures were done, but the itch proved too strong. That also sucks up more time than expected, as I’m determined not to lag behind and end up massively rushed as I approached the deadline.

On the plus side I’m starting to get the hang of budgeting my exercise time around our pets. And I am getting a lot of work done, even if it’s not on the projects I thought I’d be handling. And switching to four seven-hour days a week has done wonders for improving my productivity.

While a little disappointed, I see no reason to beat myself up.

#SFWApro. Cover art by James Steranko, painting by Salvador Dali, all rights to images remain with current holders.

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Filed under Nonfiction, Short Stories, Southern Discomfort, The Dog Ate My Homework, Time management and goals, Writing

Tagged as jekyll and hyde, let no man put asunder, Local Reporter, Savage Adventures

September 27, 2024 · 4:30 pm

A middle-of-the-road week to wrap up September

Last weekend was, well, odd. We had two social events (rare for us), a vegan potluck (revived after a long hiatus) and a trip to the Durham Life and Science Center, a cool museum neither I nor TYG had ever been to before. It has an awesome butterfly garden (photos to follow), alpacas —

—and tortoises —

— and red wolves.

Normally I’m very organized about my time, even my down time. Last weekend, maybe because we had so much to do, I just kicked back and floated the rest of the time. Felt good. Must try more of it.

Monday I worked on Jekyll and Hyde, writing my thoughts about the 1932 and 1941 versions (which I blogged about Wednesday). I also watched a string of cartoons and a couple of short from the early 1930s through 1950 (reviews to come soon). It’s way easier to find things like that online than it used to be, which is great for my work.

The rest of Tuesday I worked on Southern Discomfort. The work went well but I’d really hoped to be much further along than I am. Oh well, it’s not like anyone’s breathing down my neck to finish (and I still need to get my cover design). Wednesday it was The Local Reporter. I’d hoped to skip this week after turning in three stories last week but there was a Carrboro council meeting so no. My story on a local stop sign isn’t gripping, but I think did a good job discussing the big-picture aspects of how such traffic-safety items get approved.

Today was mostly devoted to correcting the Ceaseless Way manuscript. As usual it sucked up more time than I wanted but it’s almost done.

I turned in one Atomic Junk Shop article yesterday, on Barry Windsor-Smith’s Daredevil art.

And that was the week. Well, plus Monday I was doing my exercises in the evening and wound up seriously paining my lower back/left hip. I suspect my failure to stretch regularly is at fault; it’s really hard to do around the pets as they interpret yoga and stretching as body language for “come and snuggle!” I need to get better about that.

#SFWApro. All rights to images remain with current holders.

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Filed under Nonfiction, Southern Discomfort, The Dog Ate My Homework, Time management and goals, Writing

Tagged as ceaseless way, jekyll and hyde, TYG

September 13, 2024 · 4:30 pm

Much Jekylling and Hyding this week

Another good week, by which I mean I look at what I worked on and say yes, I did accomplish something!

I wasn’t sure I would because Wednesday was a mess. After the debate the night before, I started doing the opposite of doomscrolling, reading analyses and taunting the “No, Trump won!” and “No, Haitians really are eating cats in Springfield!” people on X. Fortunately today I was back to normal.

I rewrote the first two chapters of Jekyll and Hyde, dealing with the novel and then with the silent films. The novel chapter still needs a lot of work. I know the points I want to make (obviously I’m not going to try to cover all the critical analysis of the book or provide the definitive study) but there’s a lot of them and it’s tricky arranging them. Plus some of them may work better in the introduction or in later chapters discussing the films. So I called a halt after getting it into a reasonably workable shape. I’ll revisit after a couple more chapters.

The silent film chapter, however, went smoothly. I think I got some good discussion of the 1920 John Barrymore version. I also stumbled across an article in the Journal of Stevenson Studies listing silent versions. It added a lot of detail to some I already had and included a couple I hadn’t heard of (mostly name only). The Internet can be amazing — this would have been impossible 20 years ago.

I’m 150 pages into my final rewrite of Southern Discomfort, roughly halfway. I’ve also started proofing the rewrite, going through chapter by chapter to see if my rewrite introduced any errors (yes. My protagonist is traveling through Georgia, not Georgie).

I did an article about a Carrboro bakery for The Local Reporter and two posts at Atomic Junk Shop. One was about a bunch of unrelated Marvel stories in 1969 that have the Fantastic Four, Daredevil, Captain Marvel and the Avengers battling unstoppable robots. The other dealt with some stories and art from ’69 such as the SHIELD story above (page by Frank Sprinker) and the Gene Colan image below.